Black History Month articles, 2025

Trying to keep up with the various pride and history month articles has been more reactionary than proactive, and you can see that most with this list. Seriously, these are my notes.

If you recall, after the inauguration when information about women and people of color started being taken down, well, I was angry. I wanted to fight erasure, but I needed to act quickly, especially because I wanted to have a full 31 days but I did not want to eat into Women's History Month, so I needed to start a few days early.

I had plenty of ideas for people to include, but if it is not always easy to find interesting articles on short notice, ad the concern that anything on a government web site might be taken down.

Perhaps foolishly, I did not save the links I used. I was keeping a running list so I did not duplicate, and sometimes I included notes about the article. For example, using the National Park Service site for Frederick Douglass was a risk. They have been great, and since that park is specifically for his historical site, you would think they would have to leave it up, but with this administration...

Also, obviously for the Tuskegee Airmen, it was an article about the documentary; I did not post the documentary.

I do love the internet, and it is a great repository of information, but that was generally not my original source anyway. I read about them in books, newspaper articles, and school. The list of names is a starting place for learning more.

Here are some annotations. 

Ida B. Wells: As I said with my post that day, she is as close as I come to having a personal hero. I first read about her in The Oregonian television section when there was a special on her, I am sure on PBS. That was probably 1989; I was in high school. There are some good books about her but her own writing is also an important record of lynching and racism.

Frederick Douglass: National Park Service site: Speaking of good writing, his autobiography is excellent. It does not feel as old as it is.

Tuskegee Airmen, Real Red Tails documentary: I am sure that part of that title is that the Red Tails movie was not that great. There was a 1995 movie that wasn't that great either, though, so, you know, sometimes books are better for learning.

Marcus Garvey: NPR 'Black Moses' Lives On: How Marcus Garvey's Vision Still Resonates: I wish I knew a really good book on him. The last one I read was overly academic, but he was really ahead of his time.

Carter Woodson: The month is kind of his legacy, but that's not all he did.

Ed Dwight, first Black astronaut: This is one I totally learned about through the internet, but it was pretty interesting.

Mary Seacole: I first learned about her in Jason Porath's work, I think Rejected Princesses. There is a book about her that I am meaning to get to.

African American pioneers in cryptology: There was a good article on this that came up specifically because of their exhibit being deactivated. That made it very important to include them, as well as women pilots in the next month. There is so much out there that it would be nice to think they can't erase it all, but there is still rage about them trying.

George Washington Carver: Well, his name comes up a lot, but then most people get stuck between him inventing peanut butter or not inventing peanut butter, and then getting things about the invention of peanut butter wrong. 

Combahee Ferry Raid: Most bios of Harriet Tubman will mention this, and they should. It's kind of delightful in how well it worked.

Booker Wright: I had not heard of him previously, but I saw an article about his television interview and death and he had to be included.

Vivien Thomas: This was another article I saw that month. I was not the only one sharing, and I am grateful for that.

Benjamin Banneker: I want to say that he first heard of him in African-American History, so that would have been 1992.

Eugenia Millender: I saw her Time article: https://time.com/7210593/eugenia-millender-health-care-for-all/ 

Kent Ford: One of the Black History Month events in Portland was the showing of a movie about his life and work, and he was actually there that night.

Mary McLeod Bethune: I believe this was also from African-American History. 

Moneta Sleet and Charlotta Bass: I found this article and celebrated their birthday: https://www.theafricandream.net/three-historic-black-civil-rights-activists-born-on-valentines-day/?

Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier: I had heard the story about their road trip to get funds delivered before, but it's a good story and not that well known.

Benjamin O Davis x2: That times X is because both the father and son are distinguished veterans. For a little more of my backstory, after taking two terms each of African-American History and History of the American West, and taking history as my second major, I needed a research seminar, and the professor has to believe you know something to let you in. That made my best option African Americans in the American West, where I ended up focusing on the Buffalo Soldiers and so read a lot of Black military history, not all of which was specific to the Buffalo Soldiers. (I had never done a long research paper before and I struggled a bit to get my bearings.)

Barack Obama: Probably everyone has heard of him.

Mamie Till-Mobley: After watching Till it was important to me to include her.

Sojourner Truth: Naturally I am interested in her story, but I am focus a lot on how her speech was portrayed as Southern when her first language was Dutch. Sometimes even when we want to be admiring we stereotype. 

Denmark Vesey: Definitely first learned about in African-American history.

Nat Turner: My biggest frustration with him is that it feels like when they portray him they make his motivations about women -- either getting a white woman or protecting his own woman -- I think William Styron and Nate Parker are telling on themselves.

Madam C J Walker: Definitely first learned of her in African American History, but since then it has been noticing people getting mad at her for going along with "good" hair or other things she did wrong. Again, I think there is a lot of projection.

Berry Gordy: I guess my interest in him started with trying to figure out why Petey Greene hated him so much. I think he was a genius, and not a saint, but I like a lot of the music that came along and I don't hate him.

Crispus Attucks: He might have been featured in AP History in high school as well. 

York: I think my first encounter with York came from reading about another PBS special, I assume about the Lewis and Clark expedition.

A. Philip Randolph: This was definitely from African American History.

John Punch: I first learned about John Punch from Sassycrass, so there's that grief again. In addition to being believed to be an ancestor of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, but also diplomat Ralph Bunche, whom I had also read about, so that was very interesting to me.

Beatrice Morrow Cannady: I went to a pop-up museum for the month, and Cannady was one of the Oregon pioneers featured and she was just fantastic.

In conclusion, if you want to learn more, there are ways.

They can't make us forget. 

All kinds of action: Means and motives

I was not impressed with people throwing soup on a painting. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c243v5m0r0lo  

I admit that the future of the planet is more important than any individual work of art, but what is the purpose of this particular attack? Because they are oil paintings? 

If you hate what the oil industry destroys, is destruction -- especially not specifically targeted at the oil industry -- the best way to object?

To be fair, the paintings weren't really damaged. Great, but did anyone look at that action and think, yes, we need to stop oil! 

As much as I acknowledge that well-thought out and executed actions might be dismissed as tantrums by people who are against the cause, this still comes off more like a tantrum than anything else.

I also read about stink bombs and throwing pies... yes, I see the temptation to hurt the pride of destructive people, but it still seems not likely to be productive.

I admit to feeling some sympathy for Muntadhar Al-Zaidi, who threw shoes at George W. Bush. You know how King said "A riot is the language of the unheard"? The shoe throwing feels like that to me, that there was so much pent-up frustration with no outlet. 

I still don't think it was productive. Bush was on his way out of office. You could make a reasonable case that he should have been brought up on war crimes, but this didn't do it. Saddam Hussein being horrible was probably helpful, though also the US has a tendency to not be held accountable, which has not been good for us.

There were people who were cheered by Al-Zaidi's action, and unity can be valuable. Still, the main result of it was him getting a beating and some imprisonment, then donations which he said he would use to do good, but I can't see any evidence that he did good. 

(He was someone who believed both parties were the same, so there's a kind of fatalism in that which can make it hard to get things done.) 

Maybe when all you know how to do is attack, desire to improve isn't enough. 

That leads to one more thing I have been thinking for a few months now:

Luigi Mangione isn't a hero; Brian Thompson isn't a martyr.

It is not surprising that when health care becomes so expensive that it requires insurance, and those insurance companies are for profit, that they become evil. These days that seems almost inevitable.

It does sound like United Health Care was worse. That affected many people, including people of means who don't think problems like that are supposed to affect them.

Killing one person did not cause any reform. It caused some CEOs to feel fear, but that just led to more persecution of poor people mouthing off and increased security. He caused pain, but not productively. He allowed some really bad glee from people who are supposed to care about others.

That was destructive too.

And while it probably would have happened sooner or later anyway, Trump went from a moratorium on the death penalty under Biden to orders to pursue the death penalty whenever possible:

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-death-penalty-order-sparks-huge-luigi-mangione-donation-2033284 

("Whenever possible" is not exactly how it is worded, but it seems to be the intent and it is not hard to imagine new legislation coming that takes advantage of it.) 

Mangione wasn't trying to improve the system or help anyone; he just wanted to punish someone for his own pain. That's not proletarian heroics; that's a tantrum. 

It's also about right from a white man who comes from money and went to an Ivy League school. 

Yesterday I gave a formula for considering action:

• What is my goal?
• What is my power?
• How can I use that power toward my goal?

Those are practical considerations, but there are others that may seem more sentimental, but are actually just as practical:

• Who is the target? Do they have the power to make decisions?
• Is this likely to have a good impact?
• Is there a potential bad impact? 
• Can I do this with a good heart? 

You have to fight hate with love. 

If you can't quite feel love for the haters, then focus on loving the people you want to help. 

It's far too easy to become them. 

Forms of direct action: What makes it direct?

I have been thinking about various things that are not showing up on the list, exactly, and yet they seem related.

Mainly that's for working against capitalism, but some of the things that come up when researching direct action -- strikes, tax resistance, counter-economics -- those seem like they could be anti-capitalist.

I had read something about Greenpeace sometimes using banners to draw awareness. That is less direct than taking a boat out and disrupting whaling, but it could still count.

I had initially thought it would be something where direct action is more in your face, but then there could be organizing that was more behind the scenes. So, perhaps the banner would be direct action but sharing posts on Facebook about the same issue would be... would you call it indirect action?

The Wikipedia article calls direct action "economic or political behavior in which participants use agency -- for example economic or physical power -- to achieve their goals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action 

I like this definition because of my focus on goals anyway, but it also leaves the door open to a wide range of activities. 

When I started this series, it was largely due to a frustration with protests. I felt like they weren't effective, but also that people were forgetting the many options there are.

With no regrets for the ones I have written about, I like that additional potential action that is almost unlimited.

Of course, there are limits. A strike can jeopardize your income.  Tax resistance can result in fines and jail. 

It is important to think about all of those things before doing them.

Maybe that definition is the part of the formula for figuring that out:

• What is my goal?
• What is my power?
• How can I use that power toward my goal?

Although some of the protests were specifically against ICE, I feel like the overall theme was "I hate Trump being president!" (I share that sentiment.)

None of those protests did anything to move him from office. 

I think the best hope of getting him out of office is voter enfranchisement, especially in red states. As many terrible people as there are who celebrate Trump, they are the minority. With corporate support, they have nonetheless been very good at dis-enrollment, voter intimidation, gerrymandering, and probably at least a little tampering. 

Georgia, in the South, turned blue from exactly that kind of work.

It won't be enough, because all of the offices matter. Improving the Supreme Court won't be easy. People who may not be hopeless but still voted for Trump or third-party candidates will need work. 

There's a lot to do, and there are lots of ways to work toward it.

But I want to get back to those "pranks". 

Forms of direct action: Pranks and hacks

When I was looking at the various forms of direct action, I was surprised to see pranks. Then I remembered the soup on the Van Gogh. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c243v5m0r0lo 

That would send things off in a completely different direction, so I am going to get back to that another day. 

Otherwise there were mentions of stink, critter, and paint bombs, plus pieing people in the face. 

Those all seem pretty juvenile and possibly dangerous, so I wasn't finding that particularly inspirational.

Then, with hacktivism, that is so far outside my area of knowledge that I don't even feel qualified to comment on it, except that I know that a lot of doxxers are doing terrible things while feeling like they are great.

That all goes into looking at motives and means, which should be the focus of Thursday's post.

I'm not just going to skip it over, though, for two reasons.

One is a mention of The Yes Men, who have used some impersonation and web pages to do at least some things that seem like they might have helped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men 

Admittedly, acquiring a domain that is not currently in use does not require hacking, but it can be effective. Therefore, I suspect there might be hacking options that would lead to being more effective.

The other thing that is making me think again was something I read in Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes.

In writing about the difficulties of improving traffic, where things like added lanes and more traffic cops regularly fail, he said France had put mimes at intersections who would mock those driving badly. 

I know, mime implementation sounds so extreme, but it worked.

From the footage I have seen of French traffic, it's hard to believe anyone would even notice. I have to assume that the success is due largely to attention being drawn and maximizing the social scorn. If you cut one person off, they may be the only person to notice. Once the mime points it out, everyone there knows.

I'm not saying that would work here in the States. First of all, France would surely have a greater supply of mimes available; I am not jealous of that.

Also, if the issue is being called out for bad behavior and feeling some shame for that, our society may have lost some susceptibility for that over the past few years.

However, it reminds me that creativity can come up with surprising wins.

I don't have any suggestions in this category, and even if I had a great hacking idea I would not be able to carry it out.

That may not be true for you.

Do think about what you are doing, and why, and potential consequences to you and others. (A lot of pranks and hacks could carry legal penalties.)

Don't stop thinking.

Pride articles for June

As much pressure as I have felt in trying to stay on top of these various months (and I am not currently planning on anything for August), it has also been kind of affirming for me that I have been able to find material.

As I started July's Disability Pride Month, I thought I had my first duplicate with Harriet Tubman, whom I was sure that I had used for Black History Month. 

Going back to check, I had used the Combahee River Raid, not Tubman herself. 

Of course, then I had not marked the date on Laverne Cox's post and posted twice, so I ended up having to post an article on July 1st to feel like I was really being complete. I mean, I did have two people with the article on Ellen Corby and Will Geer, but June only has 30 days when some months have 31... I think it ended up being fine.

(I do appreciate that posting about Keith Haring gave me another chance to say something negative about AI. I think that is going to need a separate post.)  

Anyway, the wonderful point there is that while Black History Month had men and women and Women's History Month had women of multiple races, and there was at least one queer and one disabled person in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander History Month articles, Pride Month is integrated as well!

(Only Women's History Month has an associated blog post at this time. There are drafts.) 

There are men and women and transgender and Black and white and Asian-American, and that for all of these amazing people, I keep finding more. 

The consistent message I am going to give is that people matter.

It doesn't even sound that radical, but look around.

My favorite post probably came when I was looking up Blackberri. His story had resonated with me back when I first reviewed him in 2021. I knew he was old, so it wasn't exactly a shock when he died (later that year, in fact), but I was the only person I knew who knew about him. It wasn't overpowering grief, but it was lonely. So then to see -- and I didn't expect to find anything, but I still looked -- a "Happy Heavenly Birthday" article that had just gone up, well, it mattered. 

I was also glad to get a chance to spotlight Cleve Jones again, and know that he is still around, though not young. Looking him up after reading And the Band Played On where there was so much death, it seemed like a miracle that he was still alive, at that point 36 years after the book was published. Then it was Jones' book, When We Rise, that gave me the four lawmakers who had gained office before Harvey Milk, even if not as famously. 

For the record, those are Elaine Noble, of Boston, first openly gay candidate elected to a state legislature; member of the Minnesota Senate Allen Spear, elected while closet but who came out and continued to serve shortly before Noble's election; Kathy Kozachenko, first openly gay candidate to successfully run for election, in this case to the Ann Arbor city council; and Nancy Wechsler, who along with Jerry DeGrieck was elected to the Ann Arbor city council while closeted, but they both came out while in office and before Kozachenko's win.

See, unless I missed it, Jones had not mentioned DeGrieck, but I planned on looking up the four, and then it turned out that Wechsler, Kozachenko, and DeGrieck were all UMich alumni from the article I found. 

Some of the distinctions for the various "firsts" may seem minor, but often there is a progression being made, and steps are being taken all along. 

Also, it kind of makes sense that a lot of those firsts are happening in a college town. 

Anyway, for that one previous post this year where I listed articles, the title mentioned fighting erasure. In a year where USNS Harvey Milk is being renamed because this current administration can't stand anything short of complete fascist white supremacy, that fight is going to be ongoing. 

Don't give up the ship. 

June articles 

6/1 Alan Turing: https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/magazines/cheshire/24329394.alan-turing-codebreakers-tragedy-triumphs/

6/2 Little Richard: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/05/little-richard-anti-gay-died-queer-cultural-influence-overshadows-us/

6/3 Troy Perry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Perry

6/4 Anne Lister: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/581234/gentleman-jack-anne-lister-facts

6/5 Louisa May Alcott: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/05/little-women-author-louisa-may-alcott-transgender-man/

6/6 Bayard Rustin: https://www.history.com/articles/bayard-rustin-march-on-washington-openly-gay-mlk

6/7 Oscar Wilde: https://interestingliterature.com/2021/02/best-works-by-oscar-wilde-books-stories/

6/8 Blackberri: https://www.queerty.com/blackberri-profile-music-artists-activist-20250530/

6/9 Laverne Cox: https://www.them.us/story/laverne-cox-interview-career-hollywood

6/10 Posted Laverne Cox again :(

6/11 George Takei: https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/george-takei-recounts-his-coming-out-story-in-new-graphic-memoir-it-rhymes-with-takei-see-inside-exclusive/ar-AA1G5f91?ocid=BingNewsSerp

6/12 Paul Reubens: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/pee-wee-herman-creator-paul-reubens-documentary-coming-out

6/13 Ellen Corby and Will Geer: https://doyouremember.com/142128/grandma-grandpa-walton-gay

6/14 Harvey Milk: https://www.advocate.com/news/who-was-harvey-milk

6/15 Elaine Noble: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/pride50-america-s-first-out-lawmaker-elaine-noble-n1010831

6/16 Allan Spear: https://www.advocate.com/news/2008/10/14/allan-spear-openly-gay-politician-dies-71

6/17 Kathy Kozachenko: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/meet-lesbian-who-made-political-history-years-harvey-milk-n1174941

6/18 Nancy Wechsler: https://alumni.umich.edu/michigan-alum/when-pride-prevailed/

6/19 Sally Ride: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/movies/people-didn-t-like-women-in-space-how-sally-ride-made-history-and-paid-the-price/ar-AA1GK7tJ?ocid=feedsansarticle

6/20 Margarethe Cammermeyer: https://time.com/archive/6720598/i-just-dont-want-to-go-margarethe-cammermeyer/

6/21 The Laramie Project: https://playbill.com/article/an-oral-history-of-the-laramie-project-25-years-after-matthew-shepards-murder

6/22 Cleve Jones: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/the-city/cleve-jones-says-he-fears-activism-legacy-could-be-reversed/article_99656955-2340-4884-9942-c8898fbb1f01.html

6/23 AIDs quilt: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aids-memorial-quilt-now-online-180975370/

6/24 Freddie Mercury: https://www.intomore.com/culture/freddie-mercury-and-the-erasure-of-queerness-in-bohemian-rhapsody/

6/25 Emily Dickinson: https://montecristomagazine.com/arts/secret-daring-queer-poet-emily-dickinson

6/26 Alvin Ailey: https://www.istd.org/discover/news/queering-history-the-revelations-of-alvin-ailey/

6/27 James Baldwin: https://www.vice.com/en/article/james-baldwins-queerness-was-inseparable-from-his-blackness/

6/28 Sappho: https://www.thecollector.com/who-was-sappho-of-lesbos/

6/29 Audre Lorde: https://indepthnh.org/2024/11/19/audre-lorde-the-warrior-poet-of-justice-and-equity/

6/30 Adrienne Rich: https://english-studies.net/diving-into-the-wreck-by-adrienne-rich-a-critical-analysis/

7/1 Keith Haring: https://digestfromexperts.com/6395/keith-haring-unfinished-painting/

https://mymodernmet.com/artificial-intelligence-finishes-keith-harings-unfinished-painting/